With
the crowds having fun at the hub in Boston, with the team
gearing up to go deep this October, with a roster loaded with talent
and more
on the way, a flashback to Sox in the Sixties is almost like culture
shock.

September
28th, 1960, Red Sox vs. Orioles. Overcast, dank,
chilly the final day of the final home stand of the 1960 season. Only
10,454
showed up. The game was not televised locally or nationally. “You
Made Me
Love You,” playing over the loudspeaker, created a melancholy
mood.

FRANK
MALZONE: I wish there was more people there.
They didn’t realize, you know.

Curt
Gowdy, Red Sox radio and television voice,
began the spare ceremony: ''Twenty-one years ago, a skinny kid from San
Diego,
California…”' Boston Mayor Collins, seated in a wheelchair, presented a
$1,000
check to the Jimmy Fund, the favorite charity of Ted Williams, 42, who
was
given a plaque by the local sports committee. The inscription was not
fully
read. Williams hated a fuss.

He
even was annoyed by the news announced to the
crowd that his uniform number, 9, would be permanently retired. It
was
the first time the team ever honored a player that way.

Williams
said over the loudspeaker: ''In spite
of all the terrible things that have been said about me by the knights
of the
keyboard up there ... and they were terrible things, 'I'd like to
forget them,
but I can't…. I want to say that my years in Boston have been the
greatest
thing in my life.''

FRANK
MALZONE: Ted hit two balls good, the first one got into the
wind in the right field corner and was pulled back and caught by the
right
fielder, the next one the center fielder caught.

CURT
GOWDY (Game Call) "Everybody quiet now here at Fenway
Park after they gave him a standing ovation of two minutes knowing that
this is
probably his last time at bat. One out, nobody on.

BOB
KEANEY: Ted dug in, wiggled his fanny, and glared at pitcher
Jack Fisher. Everyone stopped breathing. Ted swung as hard as he could,
but he
missed the fat pitch and nearly sprained his arms.
Some
dreamers said later that Ted missed on purpose, so that Fisher would be
fooled
into throwing that fast ball again.

CURT
GOWDY (Game Call) Jack Fisher into his windup, here's
the pitch. Williams swings -- and there's a long drive to deep right!
The ball
is going and it is gone! A home run for Ted Williams in his last time
at bat in
the major leagues!"

JERRY
CASALE: I
was in the bullpen with Bill Monbouquette and Mike Fornieles and
others.
We were all up front looking over the railing. The ball
went over
our heads.

Williams
circled the bases as he always did, in a hurry, with his head down
trotting out
Number 521, his final homer. The crowd stood and cheered the man and
the
moment.

BROOKS
ROBINSON: I was playing third base. He
went running around the bases, and I looked at him as he passed second
base. I
had my arms folded as he passed me. That was absolutely a magical
moment to be
a part of that history.

STEVE
RYDER: He had that regal trot around the bases. Didn’t
tip his cap, didn’t look at the stands, just right into the dugout.

The
inning ended and Williams went out to play
left field in the the top of the ninth. Just before the inning began
Carroll
Hardy replaced him. “The Kid” ran in. The crowd had one more standing
ovation
in it.

“We
want Ted. We want Ted!" The fans
chanted. But he refused to come out for a curtain call. Later it was
reported
that players and umpires tried to get him to come out. No dice.

FRANK
SULLIVAN: We
all wanted him to stop and at least take his cap off but that
sonofabitch, he
just ran into the dugout. He didn’t stay around or let us say
anything. You know that was the way that Ted
was. He
went down the dugout steps straight into the tunnel. That was it,
aloha.
We didn’t know that that was his last game but we all suspected
it. We
were out of contention, so he wasn’t robbing the team. It was
just Ted
was Ted.

In
My Turn at Bat, Williams
wrote:
"You can't imagine the warm feeling I had, for the very fact that I had
done what every ballplayer would want to do on his last time up, having
wanted
to do it so badly, and knowing how the fans really felt, how happy they
were
for me. Maybe I should have let them know I knew, but I couldn't. It
just
wouldn't have been me."

About
Harvey Frommer:
One of the most prolific and respected sports journalists and oral
historians in the United States, author of the autobiographies of
legends Nolan Ryan, Tony Dorsett, and Red Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer
is an expert on the New York Yankees and has arguably written more
books, articles and reviews on the New York Yankees than
anyone. In 2010, he was selected by the City of New York as
an historical consultant for the re-imagined old Yankee Stadium site,
Heritage Field. A professor for more than two decades in the MALS
program at Dartmouth College, Frommer was dubbed “Dartmouth’s Mr.
Baseball” by their alumni magazine.

“As a
lifelong Yankees fan, I was devouring every last delicious new detail
about my beloved Bronx Bombers in this fabulous new book.” —Ed Henry,
author of 42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story